HTC: Droid Eris complaints nothing compared to iPhone 4

EXCLUSIVE: HTC starts its fightback against Apple

HTC: Droid Eris complaints nothing compared to iPhone 4

17 July 2010 23:05 GMT / By Stuart Miles

While HTC hasn't yet come back with an official comment, in respect to Apple's decision to highlight the Droid Eris' performance at its emergency press conference, it was happy to let Pocket-lint know about how many of its customers have complained about the Droid Eris.

If you remember, the Droid Eris was one of the handsets featured in the Apple press conference, now dubbed the Antennagate conference, with Steve Jobs and Apple singling it out over more popular handsets like the all metal bodied HTC Legend, and the metal chassis HTC Desire or HTC Nexus One.

So what percentage of people have complained?

"Approximately .016% of customers", Eric Lin, the company's global PR and online community manager exclusively revealed to us before adding that "we have had very few complaints about signal or antenna problems on the Eris".

Admittedly it's not as hard hitting as Nokia or RIM's "Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable" statement, but hopefully that's still to come.

We will keep you posted.

Read our HTC Droid Eris review.


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Comments

  • Is he lying thru his teeth, maybe not, at the low percentage of the phones sold so are the complaints. But then HYC is not Apple and no one cares btw to to what happened.

    The EVO bricking after an update is also a non story - only Apple is news while the rest is just a footnote.
    Posted by AdamC, turkey
  • Apple HATE stories are the driving motor of the TECH internet. That's where the clicks and the maney is. Feeding the Microsoft gamer egoists the hate they live for. Posted by zato, USA
  • It's very low class of Apple to point the finger at other manufacturers' products in order to try and deflect and deny their own rather large screw-up. If they can't think of a better way of dealing with a product issue than saying, 'Well theirs does it,' then that's a very poor effort from a market leader and makes them look rather amateurish. Posted by NWBlue, United Kingdom
  • I don't think it was poor form, just a call for judging consistently based on factual evidence. If people believed the other phones were fine, then they should judge the iphone4 fine as well. Conversely, if the behavior was a problem on iphone4, then it should be a problem everywhere it exists. Apple's initial reaction was that the status quo wasn't a problem, then the blogs ran with the controversy. Now Apple's changed their assessment. Posted by N8nnc, Usa
  • Just like the iPhone 4 is a fashionable smartphone, it has become fashionable for the iHater blogging pricks to bash Apple. They're like little children that need to get attention. Calling for their mommas if their get a scratch on their knee. Most of the people that are complaining are not even iPhone 4 owners. They're just nobodies looking for some web hits to their site. If such a minor issue hit any other company's smartphone, hardly anyone would even know about it. Antennagate got about a zillion times more attention than Microsoft pulling both Kins after a couple of weeks and selling only a thousand or so. That was a massive mobile failure and hardly anyone cared. The bloggers could have had a field day with Microsoft, but the blogging pricks didn't even mention it. They're so focused on trying to tarnish Apple's reputation. Of course, they didn't in the least, but they made Steve Jobs waste his time trying to explain something that even a child should be able to figure out. Either get a case or return the iPhone 4. It was as simple as that.

    Bloggers need to set their priorities straight. They could have spent all their energy cursing and railing BP for ocean pollution, killing wildlife and causing huge financial losses for fishermen and beach resort owners. Instead they make a big deal out of a "death grip" that takes signal bars away. What a bunch of anti-Apple retards.

    How many people even have a Droid Eris? A couple of thousand chumps? If the antenna didn't work at all, who cares? It's certainly not going to pull in billions of dollars of revenue like the iPhone 4 will.
    Posted by steffenjobbs, USA
  • The media needs to do a REAL TEST, compare amount of dropped calls using left hand holding the iPhone 4 compared to using the left hand on all other phone brands! How hard can that be! You are the press, you are the media. Do the real tests this way it will be simple fact that iPhone 4 has the industry's worst antenna and the industry's most dropped calls when the phone is held with the left hand. Posted by Charbax, Denmark
  • So because HTC and RIM drop calls then it is alright for Apple to do so. Posted by E X Iphone owner, HTC land now
  • The #1 rule of antenna design: Thou shalt not touch.

    Yes, wireless signals get attenuated when they have to travel through your hand. All phones will have some signal degradation when held, as compared to the same phone sitting on a table.

    However, the iPhone 4 problem is not strictly attenuation. When you touch a bare antenna, you are changing its resonant frequency. When you bridge it to another antenna, you are radically changing its resonant frequency. This severely degrades performance. This is why the bumper case helps with the problem (though so would a good coat of clear lacquer or a pair of gloves) -- with the case, the iPhone antenna will perform similarly to other phones.

    Any RF engineer worth hiring would know this: you do not design a bare antenna system that will be held by a bare hand under normal operating conditions.

    For Apple to name other handset manufacturers and claim thay are just as bad at this is classless at best, an outright lie at worst, and 150% disingenuous. Nokia's "we would never let a visual design decision take precedence over function/physics" statement is right on the money.

    Apple makes beautiful products that are a pleasure to use, when they're working. They need to get better at allowing form to follow function... or we'll be back in the days of glowing lucite cubes with poorly placed power buttons and fragile, crack-prone cases.
    Posted by Tox, US
  • Fuck you Stephen Jobs. My Eris would kill the iphone any day of the week.... Posted by bob, usa
  • So let's all get up in Apple's business for making a phone that performs no worse than everyone else's. I just don't f'in get it. Posted by RF9, USA
  • The "media needs to do a REAL TEST"? They don't need to, because Consumer Reports have already conducted the most exhaustive testing anyone outside the FCC could have done, and they REFUSED to recommend the iPhone 4 based on the antenna problems. They haven't done that any other model of phone. In fact, they told their customers that they recommended the iPhone 3GS, and it had just as extensive testing. Why would they do that if it had the same antenna problems as the iPhone 4? Posted by Rob, USA
  • @steffenjobbs

    First of all, the complaints about iPhone 4 were started by its customers, not by some bunch of "anti-Apple retards". Those "retards" wouldn't know about the problem, since they don't own an iphone, right?
    Second of all, maybe the guys at Consumer Reports are retarded as well, wouldn't you think so? http://goo.gl/TLou
    The thing is that Apple doesn't want to take responsibility for a design ERROR and are trying a desperate cover-up story. THAT is inadmissible for a company with such pretenses as Apple. That's what bothers me.
    Posted by inrya, US
  • I have a Droid Eris 2.1OS, and after hearing about the video, I tried to duplicate the bar loss shown in the Apple video...I could not do it. I get three bars at my house and try as I might (even wrapping both hands around the phone) at both work and home, I could not simulate the bars dropping. I have also never experienced a drop call problem.

    On the other hand, when a co-worker brought in his new Iphone 4, we could immediately duplicate the antenna issue, both with just a finger and if we gripped the phone with one hand. He bought a bumper and it solved the problem but he is ticked because it doesn't look nearly as slick with the bumper on it.
    Posted by Droid Eris User, For Open Architecture

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